Five Minutes
by Charlotte -LOVE
Summary: Six year-old Kurt is puzzled and intrigued when a strange man in a blue box crashes into his life, only to disappear with the broken promise of "I'll be back in five minutes". Doctor!Blaine. Rated for language.
1. Chapter 1

**I don't own Glee or Doctor Who. Did I even need to say that? Seriously?**

* * *

><p>The curly haired man looked across the neatly trimmed lawn at the small boy who was standing on the decking. A pink torch decorated with purple flowers was clasped in the boy's hand, and the man winced as the light shone directly into his eyes.<p>

"You're in my garden," the child said.

"Am I?" the man asked. "Oh. I'm sorry about that. The engine failed just as I got into the Solar System. Luckily it had enough power to get to Earth, but I couldn't control exactly where I landed. I guess I'm lucky that I didn't crash in the middle of the Atlantic."

The boy's eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "You're not making any sense."

"Aren't I? Sorry. Let's start again." He finally pulled himself out of the police box lying horizontally on the ground, and walked closer to the boy, holding out his hand in greeting. "Hello, my name's the Doctor. What's yours?"

"Kurt Hummel," the boy said, slowly shaking the man's offered hand. "The Doctor is a title, not a name. Like my dad is 'mister Hummel'. So what's your real name?"

"I told you, it's the Doctor. That's my name because I'm special."

"It's confusing. Can I call you something else?"

The Doctor shrugged. "As long as it's nothing too awful…"

The small boy cocked his hip and pursed his lips and the Doctor had to smile at the concentration on his face.

"You look like a… Blaine."

"Blaine?" the Doctor repeated dubiously.

"Yeah. Like Blaine from Pretty In Pink. That's one of my favourite films."

The Doctor - or Blaine - smiled. "If it makes you happy then you can call me Blaine. I suppose I need to make up for landing in your roses." He looked around the small, suburban lawn. "So, Kurt, where exactly is your back garden?"

"Lima, Ohio, the United States of America," Kurt recited. He opened his mouth to say something else but was cut off by the Doctor's stomach rumbling loudly. "Are you hungry?"

Blaine nodded in mock sadness, patting his belly. "Controlling crashing police boxes always burns up my energy supplies."

Kurt blinked up at him but didn't ask questions; he grabbed the man's hand and pulled him through the open back door into an immaculately clean kitchen. The Doctor paused uncertainly in the doorway, knowing that his clothes were shredded and dirty from the exploding spaceship, but Kurt didn't seem to complain about his messy state as he took a few small steps inside.

"What would you like to eat?" Kurt asked. "I can make anything but I'm not allowed to touch the knives without my dad."

"I won't need anything complicated enough to involve sharp knives," Blaine assured, opening the fridge door to look for something promising. "Ew. Why are there so many vegetables in here?"

"Because vegetables are good for you and make you grow tall and strong. Don't you eat your five-a-day?"

"No," the Doctor replied, shutting the fridge and kneeling down to look through the freezer. He extracted a tub of Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough from the recesses of a drawer full of frozen peas with a grin. "Not when there's ice cream available!"

"That's probably why you're so short," Kurt told him seriously, handing him a spoon with _Kurt_ written across the handle in sequins.

"I'm not _that_ short," Blaine grumbled as he popped the lid off.

Kurt hopped up onto the table, swinging his legs slightly as he watched Blaine devouring the ice cream like a starving man.

"Are you a policeman?" he asked.

"No, I'm the Doctor. Although I was a policeman once. Not a real policeman of course, not that anyone else knew that! Oh, that uniform got me into a _wild_ party." He glanced at Kurt and shut his mouth. "But you're probably a little too young to go into the details."

"So... Is that a yes?"

"Does it matter whether I'm a policeman or not?"

"Well, my dad told me I wasn't ever allowed to talk to a stranger unless they were part of the police."

"Oh, well then, yes. I'm a policeman. Where is your dad, anyway? Surely he should be home at," he glanced at the clock hanging over the door, "eleven at night?"

Kurt shook his head. "It's the fourteenth of June. Dad always goes to visit mom today and he doesn't get back until very late. I can look after myself for an evening though. I _am_ six."

"You're six years old, at home with a stranger eating ice cream in your kitchen and you're not at all afraid?"

Kurt shrugged. "You don't seem like a mean person."

"Ah, but how would you know what a mean person is like? Have you met any?"

Kurt's lips turned down into a frown. "Yes. There are lots in my class."

"Really?" the Doctor asked. "What do they do?"

"Call me names. Tease me. Once, David Karofsky pushed me over, but the teacher saw him and told him off so he didn't do it again."

"You're right, those are mean people," Blaine said seriously.

"I wish that they would leave me alone," the boy said quietly. "I don't even know why they pick on me."

The Doctor stared at the child for a second before saying, "Well, I know how to deal with bullies, seeing as I'm so tough and threatening." Kurt giggled slightly. "So, how about I come and glare at the mean kids for you so that they leave you alone?"

Whatever Kurt was going to say in reply was cut off by a loud whooshing noise echoing from the back garden. The Doctor leapt to his feet in a panic, digging into his pocket to pull out a key, the ice cream spoon still held in his other hand.

"No, no, no!" he shouted to himself as he sprinted out of the back door, Kurt tripping up in his haste to follow.

"Where are you going?" he called from the doorway.

The Doctor turned, one foot already in the police box. "It just needs to be stabilised. Don't worry; I'll be back in five minutes."

"That's what my mom said," Kurt said sadly. "And she never came back."

Blaine raised his eyebrows at the small boy, cast a glance at the creaking and groaning blue box before moving back over so that he was in front of Kurt, kneeling down to make Kurt meet his eyes.

"Kurt," he said softly, "I'm not going to abandon you. I'm just going to make sure that _that_," he jerked his head back towards the box, "isn't going to explode. I'll be back in _five minutes_ and then I'll help you chase down all of your bullies."

"Five minutes?" Kurt asked.

Blaine nodded. "Five."

* * *

><p>Five minutes.<p>

Four minutes and fifty nine seconds.

Four minutes and fifty eight seconds.

Kurt was sure that he was going to go mad before the clock actually struck three o'clock. He had already mapped out his afternoon perfectly – with the events timed down to the precise minute – and if Mr. Schuester let them out of Spanish even thirty seconds late then his day was going to be completely off-kilter.

The bell rang and Kurt was on his feet, ignoring all of his classmates in his desperate attempt to get out of the door first.

This was the part of his day that he dreaded the most. Either nothing happened, and he was able to keep up with his rigid timetable or-

"Hey, butt boy!" someone shouted from behind.

_Or this happens_, Kurt thought grimly to himself, pushing past the people who had stopped to see who was shouting.

"Oi! Faggot! I'm talking to you."

He just needed to get to his car, and then he would be safe for the day. If he was lucky, the Neanderthals would get stuck behind a group of slow moving people and he would be able to escape from this conflict unscathed.

But Kurt Hummel was never lucky.

In fact, he was starting to believe that the universe was out to make his life dreadful.

A meaty hand closed on his shoulder, tugging him to a stop. With a weary grimace set in place, he turned on the spot to sneer at the swarm of letterman jackets.

"What?" he snapped.

The hand on his shoulder – belonging to David Karofsky, one of his main tormentors – pushed so that he stumbled backwards a few steps.

"Now, now, lady, you want to be polite with us," he warned, his other hand clenched into a fist by his side.

"Can we just not do this for one day?" Kurt asked tiredly, trying to ignore the threatening postures of the football players. "You've cornered me every day this week, surely that's enough?"

Azimio stepped closer, a smirk firmly etched on his lips. "Well, we're waiting for that magical friend to appear – the one you were so sure was going to protect you. What'd you call him again? Blake? Blaine?"

Kurt exhaled sharply – as he always did when someone mentioned that name to him. It had been so many years that he'd managed to convince himself that the stabbing pain of betrayal in his gut was merely annoyance at an idiotic childhood belief being brought up for the umpteenth time.

"Are you still bringing that up? That was elementary school stuff."

"Yeah but you seemed so sure of it."

Nudging Azimio, Karofsky added, "Remember how he used to threaten us, Z. 'You shouldn't do this! Blaine's going to be back any time now to stop you'."

Azimio and the others joined in with increasingly high-pitched imitations of Kurt. Kurt dropped his stare to the floor, wishing that he didn't blush quite as easily. It was always the same when they brought _him_ up, they enjoyed humiliating Kurt until he was ready to turn on his heel and run away – and then they would leave him with a parting shove.

It was all Blaine's fault.

And Blaine was a figment of Kurt's imagination, so it was technically all Kurt's fault.

Was he that desperate for a best friend when he was younger that his subconscious created a person – too extraordinary to be real –to trick Kurt into believing that there was someone out there, apart from his father, who cared for him?

Whatever the reasons behind his imaginary friend were, Kurt wished desperately that he could go back to his six year old self and tell him not to go into school the next day with a bright smile and the belief that Blaine would be back at any minute. Despite the confidence he had gained for a few months, it wasn't worth the awful teasing that he had had to cope with for the next eleven years. Usually a joke would have died out by then, but everybody seemed to relish humiliating the school queer as much as possible.

"Hey, listen to us, _fag_," Azimio said, shoving Kurt back into the lockers to regain his attention.

"He's probably daydreaming about _Blaine_," one of the unseen Titans called from back of the group. "You should knock it out of him!"

_No, no,_ Kurt thought as he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to cover his face, _can't they just leave me alone for a day?_

He knew that they couldn't however. So the painful impact of a fist on his cheek, knocking his head back into the lockers, didn't surprise him. He opened his eyes slightly to glare at the football players through pained tears.

"Beiste's coming," a guy said, preventing Karofsky from aiming another punch.

Instead, he was merely slammed against the lockers one more time with a parting comment of, "See you tomorrow, homo."

His shoulders slumped forward in defeat; he slung his bag – which had fallen out of his hands when Karofsky hit him – back over his shoulder and continued walking towards the parking lot. He knew that if he stayed, a teacher would see the developing bruise on his cheek and might possibly try to help, but their version of 'help' was to offer him cups of water in their offices and talk over his problems. No one was ever punished.

The most painful thing about Blaine was the fact that Kurt knew if he had never told other people about him, he would only have to deal with slushie facials, locker slams and the occasional dumpster toss, instead of being regarded as the football team's personal punch bag. After all, being gay was bad, but being gay _and_ constantly talking about an imaginary man? He had practically _asked_ to be put in this situation.

Kurt's schedule was now completely messed up. He wouldn't be able to go home and listen to his Evita soundtrack while completing him homework, before embarking on a Desperate Housewives marathon, and starting dinner for when his dad got home.

No, instead he would attempt to sneak into the house without being noticed by Finn (which would be hard if he was pigging out in front of the television), grab some ice from the kitchen, and then spend the hours before his dad came home trying to reduce the swelling and covering up the black eye.

All in all, a horrible day.

Though it did begin to look up slightly as Kurt pulled up to his house and realised that he had forgotten that Finn was on a date with Quinn. It meant that as soon as the front door closed behind him – and he wasn't in danger of being spotted by curious neighbours – Kurt could release the sob that he had been holding in.

It just wasn't _fair_.

One thing that Kurt was sure of was that as soon as he could – the very _second_ that he had received his high school diploma – he was getting out of Ohio. It didn't even matter to him if he got into New York University, he would take begging on the streets of New York over wasting his life in Lima, Ohio.

_It doesn't even have to be New York_, Kurt mused as he pressed a bag of frozen peas to his cheek, sighing as the numbing cold met his stinging skin, _as long as it's far away from here. Maybe LA. Or I could become a stripper in Vegas. That'd pay well..._

His internal musings were cut short by a strangely familiar sound echoing through his house. A loud, obnoxious _whooshing_ sound that had haunted Kurt's dreams for almost twelve years. Kurt froze in the middle of his kitchen, one hand still pressing the peas to his face, the cold burning his skin from the prolonged contact.

Was it?

No.

That was a daydream. A fantasy. Something created by a lonely little boy who was up past his bedtime one night.

It was _not_ real.

"Kurt?" a voice called from the garden. "I'm back! Although judging from the sunlight, I'm a few hours late..."

He wasn't real. He wasn't real. Enough psychiatrists had told him that. And yet...

Slowly, Kurt made his way to the glass patio doors, his breath catching in his throat and the bag of peas falling to the ground as he was greeted by the sight of Blaine– _his imaginary friend, Blaine_ – looking around the garden in bemusement. He turned at the noise of the door sliding open; the bright smile fell from his face as he saw Kurt.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said politely, straightening up slightly, "I was looking for Kurt Hummel? I promised him I would be back in a few minutes, but I think I overshot."

"Yeah," Kurt said so quietly it was almost a whisper, "you overshot."

Blaine's eyes widened and he actually took a step away from Kurt.

"Kurt? _Kurt_? You're Kurt? Kurt, the little boy who I was talking to not five minutes ago?"

Kurt choked out a laugh. "I'm Kurt. The little boy who you were talking to _eleven years_ ago."

"Eleven years? No. No, I said five minutes. I promised you five minutes. I can't be that late. I'm the Doctor, I keep my promises."

He looked so sure of himself, his hands smoothing down the lapels of a brand new, ridiculously ugly blue blazer, his hair – which had been curly the first time they'd met – gelled into a helmet on top of his head.

"Well, you broke that one," Kurt said, turning on his heel and closing the door behind him.

He needed to go upstairs and sleep. Because there was no _way_ that this was possible. Blaine was a fantasy – and even if he _was _real, it was completely impossible for him to turn up on Kurt's doorstep eleven years later, not looking a minute older than the last time Kurt had seen him.

"No, wait! Kurt, stop!"

The door opened again, and there was a hand on Kurt's shoulder, preventing him from storming upstairs and locking himself in his room.

What confused Kurt the most was that he could _feel_ Blaine's hand on his shoulder. How could he feel something that wasn't real?

"Has it really been eleven years?"

Kurt nodded.

"So you're... how old now?"

"Seventeen."

"Seventeen," Blaine repeated, shocked. "That's... _old_. You were only six five minutes ago."

Kurt – who had been avoiding Blaine's piercing gaze – suddenly snapped his head up to stare right at him, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion because, no matter what he had been told over the past eleven years, Blaine was real. Blaine was _here_. It was impossible, but it was true.

"What _are_ you?" he asked quietly, his voice stumbling over the words. "How are you here, eleven years late, and looking exactly the same as you did before? _What_ is that blue box and how can it disappear?" _Why did you break your promise?_

"I'm the Doctor. I'm an alien from outer space who travels in time in a police box called a TARDIS and arrives at people's houses in the middle of the night to eat their ice cream before running away."

Kurt didn't laugh at Blaine's joke. He didn't even _hear_ Blaine's joke, he was too busy trying to wrap his head around the concept of Blaine being a time travelling alien.

"Are you being serious?" he asked, becoming surer that this was an elaborate practical joke being played on him.

Blaine huffed. "What is it with you humans? You never seem to believe me. Is it _that_ unbelievable?"

"You just told me you're an alien! I think I have a right to be slightly dubious, don't you?"

"Time travelling alien," Blaine corrected. He sighed at Kurt's expression of disbelief before reaching into the inner pocket of his blazer and pulling something out. "Here. I realised that I forgot to give it back."

Kurt took the item and looked down at it in shock.

It was his spoon that Blaine had eaten used to eat the ice cream – that he had stolen. The one thing that kept Kurt believing that that night _must_ have been real for so many years, because how did a spoon go missing from a drawer?

It had smears of ice cream on it, and the sequins that spelled out his name were still glittering – not faded by age like they should have been.

"This… this is my spoon," Kurt said simply, then cursed inwardly for the obvious statement.

"Yeah. It's probably bad form to steal from a child, so I thought I should give it back."

"It's covered in liquid ice cream." Again, Kurt felt like face palming for how slow he sounded.

Blaine didn't seem to notice, as he said, "Yeah, the TARDIS got a bit hot – she usually does after having to remake herself – so it melted a bit."

He was looking at Kurt with wide, cheerful eyes. There wasn't anything malicious in those eyes, no obvious intent to hurt him.

"You're not... You're telling the truth?"

"Yep."

Kurt clenched his eyes shut as he said the next part, knowing it sounded completely ridiculous. "You're a time travelling alien?"

"That'd be me."

With a frustrated sigh at himself for actually _believing_ Blaine, Kurt opened his eyes and stared at him.

"But you look so _normal_. Despite that blazer, of course. Why are you wearing it? I have to admit that the ripped, burnt clothes looked better than _that_."

Blaine frowned and stroked the lapels of the blazer. "It's nice," he defended weakly. "The TARDIS has only just started updating its wardrobe and this was the best thing I could find. I think it makes me look quite _dapper_. And I've never looked dapper before." He paused and then added, "Besides, you're wearing a bow tie."

"Yes, Blaine, but I think you'll find that bow ties are _cool_. At least, _my_ bow ties are cool," he amended. "I know they're not a style _everyone_ can pull off as fabulously as me."

"I'm still 'Blaine', huh? Not the Doctor?" Blaine asked with a smile.

"Of course. I stand by what I said when I was six: 'the Doctor' is not a name, it's a title. I've spent eleven years thinking of Blaine, and it's going to stay that way."

"You've been thinking of me for eleven years?" Blaine teased. "I'm flattered."

The smile that had been playing on Kurt's lips from the bantering slipped off his face as he remembered exactly why he still thought of Blaine so often.

"It's been impossible to forget you," he said shortly, his finger subconsciously probing at the bruise on his cheek. He shouldn't have dropped the ice; it was starting to throb slightly.

Blaine frowned at the sudden change of mood. "What's wrong? Is it to do with that bruise?"

"The football team don't appreciate the school fag spouting rubbish about an imaginary man. They like to remind me that I'm a freak daily."

There was an awkward silence as Blaine tried to take in what Kurt had said. Kurt shifted uncomfortably on his feet, wishing that he hadn't sounded so bitter – he didn't really blame Blaine for the bullying, he blamed himself for talking about him so openly.

Eventually Blaine broke the silence with, "Would the football team be the same mean people who were bothering you when you were six?"

Kurt nodded. "Sadly, living in Lima, you end up going to the same high school as all of the kids in elementary school."

"I've had to deal with mean people too," Blaine said.

Kurt glanced up at the charming man. "What did yours do?"

Blaine pursed his lips. "Same sort of thing as yours, I guess, just on a slightly different scale. They were trying to destroy the universe..."

"That must have been...um, _exciting_?" Kurt said with a raise eyebrow.

"It was rather. It put a slight dampener on things when _I_ almost died, but, as you can see, I pulled through."

"Good for you," Kurt said, not sure what one was meant to say in response to that. "Who exactly was trying to destroy the universe?"

Blaine shrugged. "Well, _that time_, it was this race of aliens called the daleks. But it varies from day to day."

"Wait, this has happened more than once?"

"Oh, Kurt, it happens on a weekly basis."

"Of course it does," Kurt muttered under his breath and then said louder, "Do you want to go and get coffee or something? We can sit down and talk instead of chatting in my hallway." _And it will be extremely awkward if dad comes home to find Blaine in the house._

A wide smile shot to Blaine's face. "Sure, I love coffee. I think. I like the energy burst."

"You do _not_ need any more energy," Kurt grumbled as he grabbed his keys from the bowl next to the door and pushed Blaine out ahead of him.

"I haven't had coffee in a while... About a month, actually. The TARDIS' coffee machine broke which sucked, but there will probably be a new one installed seeing as it's rebooted itself. That'll be-"

Kurt looked up to see what had cut Blaine off from the middle of his coffee-deprived rant, and his good mood vanished. He turned his face away pointedly, breathing in deeply to prevent any tears from falling.

"Kurt," Blaine said slowly, the happiness fading out of his voice, "does this happen often?"

"From time to time," Kurt sniffed.

The silence only lasted a few seconds before Blaine said, "You shouldn't have to put up with this."

It could easily have been a throwaway comment on how awful bullying was, but Kurt could hear the double meaning in those words.

"What are you offering me?" Kurt asked quietly.

Blaine glanced at Kurt's navigator – with the word _fag_ scrawled across it in white paint and a long scratch mark that had been keyed into the paintwork.

"Escape," he said simply. "A chance for a life _away_ from this and all of _them_. I can take you _anywhere_, Kurt. Wherever you want to go in the universe, I'll take you there."

"For some reason I think that aliens are going to be a lot worse than some homophobic bullies from Ohio."

Blaine smiled, squeezing Kurt's hand. "I'll always be there to protect you. I promise."

It took all of Kurt's strength not to say '_you've broken promises before_', but the Doctor seemed to understand what was going through his head because he clutched Kurt's hand tighter.

"That was only because the TARDIS was about to explode. It's now perfectly functional. That broken promise to you... Kurt, believe me when I say I regret leaving you here for so long."

Every part of his body screamed for Kurt to stop dithering and just say _yes_. To jump on the impossible police box and run away from his monotonous life. But there was one small part of his brain that wouldn't stop bringing up all of the people that he didn't want to remember: his fabulous best friend Mercedes; his loveable step-brother Finn; all of the Glee Club members who had accepted him despite his reputation as the boy who was absorbed with his imaginary friends; his dad who hadn't stopped supporting him, despite all that Kurt had thrown at him.

"People will miss me," Kurt muttered. "I can't just pack up and leave. How would I even begin to explain this to my dad?"

"Kurt, I can travel in _time_. If you don't want people to miss you then I can have you back by tomorrow. I can have you back by five minutes ago. We could leave for a year and then return to precisely this second so no one would know you were gone."

"I don't know you," Kurt stalled as he studiously avoided looking at his car because he knew that if he had to look at the evidence of how _shit_ his life had got, he would follow Blaine to end of the Earth. "You appeared to me when I was a boy and then left for eleven years. You're still practically a stranger."

"True, you don't know me... But I am offering you a chance to _get_ to know me. And I'm not a kidnapper, Kurt, if you decide that travelling through space and time isn't for you then I'll bring you straight home. Like I brought the spoon back."

"Are you comparing me to a spoon?" Kurt joked weakly.

Blaine smiled. "You know that's not what I meant. So, can I show you the universe?"

Kurt looked again at his vandalised car.

"You can have me back before anyone knows that I'm gone?"

"Five minutes."

"And you're sure that your police box has a working coffee machine now?"

"If it doesn't, I will buy one for you," Blaine promised, grabbing his hand.

Kurt squeezed slightly, smiling as Blaine reciprocated the action.

"Go on, then. Show me the universe."

Blaine's whole face lit up as he smiled and hummed under his breath, "_Let's run away and don't ever look back, don't ever look back..."_

* * *

><p><strong>This was originally a oneshot, but there so many people liked it when I posted it on Tumblr (<strong>youmovedmekurt(dot)tumblr(dot)com**) that I decided to write a part 2, which should be coming in a matter of days.**

**Thanks so much for reading.**


	2. Chapter 2

_My name is Kurt Hummel. When I was six I had an imaginary friend who sat in my kitchen and ate my ice cream before disappearing for eleven years. Life went on and got steadily worse, until yesterday, when my imaginary friend came back._

* * *

><p>"Are you ready to see something amazing?"<p>

"More amazing than a time travelling police box-spaceship that's magically bigger on the inside? I'm not sure if my heart will cope," Kurt said honestly, barely recovered from his mild panic attack when Blaine had first introduced him to the unbelievable proportions of the TARDIS.

Blaine just laughed and skipped happily down to the double doors that led back to the outside world. Kurt followed at a slightly less enthusiastic pace, his legs still weak from the shock that _oh-my-god-this-thing-is-bigger-on-the-inside-how-is-that-possible_. When he neared Blaine, the man gripped the door handles and pushed them open.

Kurt's breath caught in his throat.

In front of him was… space.

But not space like he had ever seen from Earth. The stars were bigger and brighter and they were _everywhere_. Every direction that his head turned, thousands of sparkling lights greeted him. He looked down, expecting to see ground, but instead was greeted the dizzying sensation of emptiness.

"Are we _floating_?" he whispered, not wanting to disrupt the stillness in front of him.

"Yep. Like space shuttles do."

"This is…" he trailed off, not sure how to phrase all of his emotions.

"Beautiful? Amazing? Spectacular? Yeah, I know," Blaine said far too calmly.

"You're used to this?" Kurt breathed, blinking away the tears that gathered from the disbelief at what he was seeing. Merely hours ago, Kurt had been just another human teenage boy, focused on graduating high school without too many bruises, and now he was _here_.

Blaine rested a hand on Kurt's shoulder and he moved to stand next to him in the open doorway. Kurt turned his head to admire the stars and caught Blaine's smile out of the corner of his eye.

"You never get used to this," Blaine answered quietly. "But yeah, this is my life." He hesitated before adding softly, "It can be yours too, if you want it."

"I don't… I can't _think_ right now."

"Look down," Blaine ordered suddenly.

Confused, Kurt turned his gaze downwards and screamed, stumbling back a few steps into the safety of the police box. Blaine started laugh before Kurt shut him up with a glare.

"_Warn me_ before you spring things like _that_ on me. I've told you, I don't like surprises."

"But your reactions are so funny." He backtracked when Kurt glared at him again. "I'm sorry, it was mean."

Kurt nodded, accepting his apology, and approached the open door again, shakily asking, "What is that?"

He tried to look down at the great hulking mass floating below them without screaming or running for the hills. It looked like a city, with skyscrapers crowded into a small space, but what freaked Kurt out was that the city wasn't attached to a planet. Instead, the buildings were simply sailing through space.

"That is the United States of America."

"What?"

"You should have heard of it, because I clearly remember you reciting your address when you were six. I'm pretty sure you said something about the USA."

Kurt remembered it too; he could still see his six year old self standing on his porch, proudly telling a strange man the address that he had spent months trying to memorise in case he got lost. He forced himself to take a breath and remember that Blaine had later offered to show him the whole of the universe from the beginning of time, so a city in the middle of space shouldn't be so unexpected.

"Can you explain in simple words what I'm looking at?"

"That is thirty first century America."

"But that's a spaceship."

Blaine squeezed his arm in comfort.

"Yes. The country was… compressed, I guess you could say, into that." He gestured to the strange group of buildings below.

"Wow. Okay. Do I get to visit?"

Blaine smiled and shut the door. "I was waiting for you to ask. Now you might want to hold on."

Kurt had learned his lesson from the first adventure (when Blaine had merely paused in the middle of humming song to say 'be careful' and started pressing buttons, forgetting to explain to Kurt exactly _what_ he should be careful of) and attached himself to the nearest sturdy object in the room.

Meanwhile, Blaine ran up to the console in the middle and began pulling levers and pressing buttons. The room shook suddenly, filled with the loud, repetitive _vworp _noise that occurred while the TARDIS was in flight. Blaine was apparently untroubled by the movement as he calmly piloted the police box. (At least, Kurt assumed he was steering – he only had a very brief explanation on how everything worked from Blaine, so the man could have been preparing the box for self-destruction for all he knew.)

All at once, the loud noises and tremors cut off and Blaine skipped away from the controls so he could stand by the door as Kurt unwound his arms from the pillar he had been clinging onto to prevent himself from falling over.

"We're here," Blaine said unnecessarily and pushed the door open, taking a step back so Kurt could exit the box first.

Kurt's immediate thought was that it was a completely anti-climactic build up, because they appeared to be standing in a nondescript alley with nothing remotely of interest in sight. Then he noticed a slightly faded poster on the wall, advertising a band playing in a small theatre… on July 2nd 3024.

Blaine only smiled as Kurt's jaw dropped and gestured for them to walk to the end of the alley where Kurt could hear the roar of car engines and babble of voices.

"Oh, no, wait," Blaine said suddenly and Kurt stopped in his tracks as Blaine bounded back into the TARDIS, reappearing a moment later with what looked like a wallet. In answer to Kurt's confused expression he said, "It's probably a good idea to bring money if we want to eat. Besides, I want to live up to my blazer and be polite and dapper and pay for things."

"…You mean you used to _not_ pay for things?"

"That was in the past, now I'm a model citizen. You see?" He held his arm out for Kurt like a gentleman. "Shall we?"

Kurt laughed as he looped his arm through Blaine's and they set off towards the source of the noise.

"So this is the United States of America a thousand years in the future?" he asked in a hushed, almost reverential tone.

"Yep," Blaine said laughing slightly, as if he was greatly enjoying Kurt's near constant state of disbelief. "Each building is a different state and each floor is a different town or city. It's slightly more complicated than that, but I doubt you'll need to know more."

"What floor are we on?"

"Sector B, Building 2, Deck 31."

"No, I meant, what_ city_?"

They emerged from the alley onto a bustling pavement. Blaine gestured in front of them. "Take a look."

It took a few moments for Kurt to place the familiar intersection because he wasn't expecting to recognise anything a thousand years after he was born. But slowly things started to click, like the brightly lit billboards mounted everywhere, and the tall buildings that lined the side of every road.

He tore his eyes away to stare at Blaine, his mouth hanging open slightly. "Blaine, is this Times Square?"

Blaine nodded.

Kurt was silent before he burst into laughter, gripping Blaine's forearm tightly. "I'm in New York! _New York_! I'm in New York before Rachel Berry! I told her I would get here first… Wait, if this is a thousand years in the future, Rachel's technically already been here before me?"

"Sort of," Blaine said, shrugging slightly, "but it's best not to think about time like it's just a line of events. It's more like a ball or a knot or something." Blaine shook his head. "It's hard to explain. But you can be happy with the knowledge that when we arrive back in twenty-first century Ohio, you will have been to New York and Rachel Berry won't have."

"If this is the future, then I've been dead for years, haven't I?"

Blaine rolled his eyes and said, "What a nice, optimistic person you are." He rolled his eyes and then added, "Let's not think about that; right now, you're alive and I want to show you New York."

Without any hesitation, Blaine was holding Kurt's hand, pulling them across a pedestrian crossing so they could stroll down the sidewalk slowly, allowing Kurt to stare around him in barely concealed amazement and giving Blaine the time to explain all the changes that had happened to the city in the thousand years – despite the fact Kurt was too busy admiring everything to pay attention to him.

"…Of course, they had to squash all of the US to make it fit on such a small scale and still keep the basic layout of the cities and towns. They decided that, for New York, it would be easier if it they completely split the residential and commercial areas onto two floor because they couldn't merge them onto this single floor. It pissed quite a few people off, actually, because they had liked living in the middle of everything, but they had to accept that they needed to compromise if they were going to travel through the stars-"

A television screen inside a shop window was advertising some sort of gadget to keep track of exactly where they were in universe. Kurt stopped to read the scrolling writing informing them they were travelling through the Virgo Cluster currently. It suddenly hit Kurt just how far away from home he was.

"New York is a spaceship," he said suddenly, interrupting Blaine's lecture. Behind him, the yellow cabs – identical to those of twenty-first century New York – whizzed along the road.

"Correction: New York is _on_ a spaceship."

"Oh, because that makes it _so_ much better."

Blaine smiled at him. "You're quite sarcastic, aren't you?"

Kurt sighed. "It's how I deal when things are overwhelming me."

"Oh… Is 'overwhelming' a bad thing?"

"Usually, yes, but…" Kurt considered the scene in front of him. It could have been a picture on a postcard from his own time, with the towering buildings, glowing neon signs, busy people whizzing down the sidewalks, huddles tourists stopping every few feet to take another picture. There were advertisements for the revival of _Wicked_ pasted on the walls at regular intervals. Kurt shook his head in amazement before finishing his sentence. "But this time, I'm enjoying being completely overwhelmed."

Satisfied with that answer, Blaine started walking again, pulling Kurt along. "Are you ready to be overwhelmed some more?"

Kurt knew that the smirk on Blaine's face meant that he was planning something that would probably result in Kurt screaming – from either happiness or shock.

"I honestly think I'm going to have a heart attack if you surprise me again, Blaine, so you better tell me what you're planning _now_."

Blaine held up his hands in surrender. "You spoil the fun," he said as seriously as he could with a huge grin on his face, but he relented. "I am taking you to see a play on Broadway."

Kurt almost yelped, raising a hand to cover his mouth to prevent any noises.

"Which one?"

"Well, I thought that I should probably take you to a show you would recognise, and seeing as _Wicked_ is being revived-"

The hand covering his lips didn't stop Kurt from interrupting with a scream of excitement.

"Did I choose the right thing, then?" Blaine asked with a smug grin.

"Yes! _Yes!_ Oh my God, _yes you did_," Kurt said, throwing his arms around Blaine's neck, realising a second later that Blaine might be uncomfortable and withdrawing.

"Excellent," Blaine said, not at all shocked by the sudden hug. He even grabbed one of Kurt's free hands as they walked and squeezed it, though Kurt couldn't tell whether the action was unconscious or not. "I think you'll really enjoy this, they did an _excellent_ job reviving it."

"Stop talking and take me to the theatre," Kurt ordered, pulling Blaine in what he thought was the right direction.

His instincts proved corrected as they stopped outside the Gershwin Theatre, staring up at the huge _Wicked_ poster.

"I have a whole playlist on my iPod devoted to this play," Kurt told Blaine. "I can't believe I'm actually going to see it!"

Blaine chuckled and pushed Kurt gently so that he moved forward. "Come on, we need to actually step foot inside the building so I can get us tickets."

Kurt squealed with excitement, clapping his hands before an unwelcome realisation hit him.

"Wait, Blaine, how are we supposed to buy tickets _on the night_? Surely it's completely sold out."

"There are _always_ seats spare for people who are willing to pay for them," Blaine informed Kurt, waving his wallet in the air as he walked towards the door, calling over his shoulder, "Now stop worrying and let me take care of this."

Kurt bit his lip – to prevent himself from asking Blaine anything else and screaming with joy – and took a few calming breaths before following Blaine into the warm lobby.

Blaine was already standing by the desk, charming the lady selling tickets. He offered Kurt a smile as he joined them, before turning back to sweet-talk the woman. Kurt tuned out the negotiation – which was definitely going in Blaine's favour – and admired the _Wicked_ poster behind the desk.

"Those seats sound excellent, don't they Kurt?" Blaine said.

"Hmm? What? Oh, yes, definitely."

Blaine rolled his eyes and stage-whispered to the woman, "He's not usually this slow, but I think his brain has broken from the excitement."

The woman laughed warmly as Kurt glared fiercely at Blaine, who grinned cheekily at him.

"I'm going to buy us a few bottles of water," he said. "Will you wait for our tickets to print?"

Kurt nodded and watched Blaine walk away until he merged into the line buying drinks, trying desperately not to leer.

"Are you locals?" the woman behind the desk asked.

Thankful for the distraction, Kurt turned back to the desk and shook his head, "No, we're just tourists."

"First time in New York?" she asked, recognising Kurt's awestruck expression.

"Yeah… It's amazing here, though. I wish I could stay forever."

A slot on the desk spat out two tickets, which the woman tore off while she spoke. "How long are you here for?"

"I think we're just passing through," Kurt said as his gaze was drawn back to the poster which was near identical to the one he drooled over in his bedroom at home. "No more than a few days."

The woman smiled at him and slid the tickets across the desk towards him. "Well, I hope you have a nice date."

"What?" Kurt yelped, tearing his eyes away.

"I hope you have a nice date," she repeated, "with your boyfriend? The short, cute guy you were with who bought the tickets, no?"

"Blaine?" Kurt said. "Oh, no, we're not dating, he's just showing me around."

The woman's eyes brightened. "Does that mean he's straight?"

"No, I'm gay." Blaine's voice said from behind Kurt and he jumped at the unexpected noise. "Sorry for hold-up, there was a long queue."

To Kurt's surprise, the woman didn't seem uncomfortable with Blaine's coming out. Instead, she sighed in mock disappointment and said, "Why must_ every_ cute guy be gay? Oh well, I hope you two enjoy the show."

"We will," Blaine said.

She waved goodbye to them as Blaine linked arms with Kurt and led him through the jostling crowd and down the aisle to their seats. He looked at Kurt in concern when he realised Kurt hadn't made a noise since the conversation.

"Are you okay?" he asked when they were seated, handing Kurt a bottle of water before unscrewing the cap on his own. "Are you hungry? Did you want me to buy you a snack as well?"

"No, it's… She didn't insult us for being gay," Kurt said in wonder. "I just had a conversation with a complete stranger who didn't think any less of me because I'm gay. That never happened in Ohio."

"Well this _is_ thirty-first century New York. It would be near impossible to find anyone here who objects to us."

Kurt smiled and tipped his head back to rest on the chair and sighed. "I never want to leave this city… spaceship… thing."

"We can stay here as long as you like, but there are a few other places I want to impress you with. I promise that all of them are as fabulous as this one."

The lights dimmed and Kurt shushed his partner frantically.

"It's starting Blaine, be quiet."

* * *

><p>"Oh my God, Blaine, that was <em>fantastic<em>," Kurt gushed as they hurried along the sidewalk to a small café, that Blaine assured him sold the best coffee in New York, after the show.

"You've said," Blaine said with dry humour. "Several times."

"It was just so_ amazing_. Can we see it again?"

"If you'd like... But don't you want to experience all of the other Broadway shows?"

"No," Kurt said, "I just want to spend the rest of my life watching that. I won't even bother leaving the theatre; I'll chain myself to my seat so they can't move me and wait for the next performance."

"I'm sure the staff will love that."

Kurt felt a drop of moisture on his face and looked up in confusion. It was strange to see a ceiling instead of the night sky, but it was stranger still when he felt another drop on his face, and then another and another.

"How is it raining?" he asked Blaine

"They have sprinklers in the roof for Central Park and the other plants," Blaine explained. "It would be too much work to for one person to go around and water everything by hand, and nobody really cares because they like the diversity of weather. I should have remembered to bring an umbrella, though."

"No, it's okay, as long as it doesn't get any heavier and mess up my hair."

"We're here anyway," Blaine said, directing Kurt through a door to his right into a small, crowded café. "Could you grab a table? What would like to drink?"

Kurt scanned the boards above the cash registers – which were filled with a lot of unfamiliar names – before he noticed a coffee that he actually recognised.

"Non-Fat Mocha, please."

Blaine nodded and Kurt searched the shop for an empty table. He spotted one by the window, and quickly wove his way through the other customers to get there before anyone else tried to grab the seat.

He stared out the window at the people rushing past, most of them were huddled under umbrellas, and others were hailing cabs. Kurt idly wondered just how big Deck 31 must be to require cabs to move around. Then he remembered that every single shop in New York was on that one floor, so it was probably monumental.

A coffee cup was set in front of him, shaking Kurt out of his thoughts.

"You scared me," he informed Blaine as the other man pulled out the chair opposite, sitting down with a sigh of contentment.

"Sorry," Blaine said, "I didn't mean to. I got us a cookie to split."

"That will go straight to my hips," Kurt informed Blaine as he pursed his lips.

"Does that mean it's all mine?" Kurt nodded. "Yay! More sugar for me!"

"You are a child," he told Blaine seriously. Blaine ignored him in favour of dipping the cookie into his coffee. Kurt rolled his eyes and took a sip of the hot drink, surprised at how good it was.

"This _is_ my favourite coffee shop for a reason," Blaine said with a smile.

Kurt moaned as he took another sip. "Can you make me coffee like this on the TARDIS?" he asked. "Because if you can't, I refuse to ever leave this city."

"Really?"

Kurt nodded, wide-eyed, but he knew his teasing smile gave it away.

"Oh dear, I guess I have to remedy that," Blaine said and he stood up.

Kurt mimicked him uncertainly, but Blaine shook his head and gestured for him to sit back down.

"No, I'll only be gone ten minutes at the most, maybe fifteen. You stay here and finish drinking your coffee and watching all the interesting people walk by, and then I'll come back and we'll go back to the TARDIS?"

He looked at Kurt for some sort of agreement on this plan.

"Um, sure," Kurt said. "I'll wait."

Blaine smiled and picked up his coffee cup.

"See you soon," he said as he made his way over to the door.

"Bye," Kurt called after him.

* * *

><p>Kurt decided he was going to buy Blaine a watch. And then strap it to his arm with cement.<p>

'Ten minutes at the most, maybe fifteen', was close to turning into half an hour. Kurt was nervously running his fingers around the now empty rim of the coffee cup. What he hated the most was not that Blaine had left him _again_, but that he had left him in an unfamiliar place, thousands of years in the future with absolutely no contacts and no possible way of getting home.

"Excuse me?"

Kurt's head shot up from the table, hoping to see Blaine's face, his heart sinking when he was greeted with the sight of a young man looking at him sympathetically.

"Unless you buy another drink, I'm afraid you need to move so that another customer can take the table."

"Oh," Kurt said, reaching his my pocket to grab his wallet and order another coffee before remembering that Blaine had paid with the strange coins that he didn't have. He stood on shaky legs and muttered, "I'll leave then."

"Sorry to make you move, sir, we're just busy," he apologised.

He replied with a nod and walked out of the warm shelter of the café and into the drizzling rain from the sprinklers. He wavered on the busy sidewalk, wondering where he could go to stay dry and keep an eye out for Blaine, before sighing and standing next to the door to the café, careful not to lean against the filthy wall.

_How could Finn think 'Drizzle' would be a good name for a baby?_ he wondered idly as he felt the water slowly loosening his hair from its carefully coiffed state.

Tears began to pool in his eyes at the thought of his stepbrother and friends back in Lima, and how fact would never see them again if Blaine didn't come back. They wouldn't know where he had disappeared to. Kurt could easily imagine his dad's panic as the days go past with no sightings of him; he knew his dad would forget to look after himself because he was dedicating all of his time to finding Kurt.

_Stop it,_ he told himself firmly, _don't break down. You're going to start attracting unwanted attention. Blaine will come back._

It was a little late for a pep talk, Kurt realised as he felt his legs shaking beneath him. He looked down at the wet, gum-covered sidewalk with disgust, knowing that if he collapsed onto that, he was never going to be able to get the grime out of his white pants.

Instead, he bent at the waist, gripping his legs to stop him falling over forward, and taking the deepest breaths he could, ignoring the tears spilling out of his eyes.

Blaine must have been gone for close to forty minutes now and Kurt had no idea what he was supposed to do.

_What if Blaine doesn't come back?_

Just as his eyes filled with fresh tears, a distressingly chipper voice called out.

"Kurt!" Blaine made his way towards him with a big smile in place and a large box under his arm. "Sorry if I'm a bit late, it took me ages to find a shop that sold a coffee maker compatible with the TARDIS' power sockets that was a decent-"

He was cut off by Kurt throwing himself at Blaine, wrapping his arms in a death-grip around his neck, pressing his cold, wet face into Blaine's shoulder. Kurt felt Blaine's free arm wrap around his waist instinctively, his hand awkwardly rubbing circles in Kurt's back.

"Kurt, what's wrong? Why are you standing outside in the rain?"

Kurt couldn't answer his questions with his head buried so deep in the fabric of the blazer, and he felt no compulsion to move from there any time soon.

"Kurt? Come on, you need to talk to me."

"_Ithoughtyouweren'tgoingtocomeback_," Kurt murmured.

"What? I can't hear you over everyone else, Kurt."

Kurt repeated it, but no more clearly than the first time.

He could feel Blaine's chest expand and relax as he sighed deeply and start shuffling along the street awkwardly, Kurt still huddled against his body. They would have moved faster if Kurt detached himself but he couldn't bring himself to let go of Blaine any time soon.

It was only when he heard the sound of a key being turned in a lock that he realised Blaine had led him back to the blue police box. It was warm and quiet inside, and Kurt couldn't help but feel glad that he was away from the noise and bustle of the city centre for a while.

Blaine let the box containing the coffee maker to drop to the floor and sat down on the small sofa that was the only seating, letting Kurt tuck himself under Blaine's arm like a child.

"Ssh, it's okay, it's all right," he soothed. "You're safe, okay?"

Kurt felt his breath even out as Blaine wiped the tears from his cheeks.

"Now, why were you so upset?" Blaine asked when he managed to extract Kurt's face completely from his blazer.

Ignoring his desire to hide himself in Blaine's shoulder, Kurt stared at his fingers and said as quietly as he could, "I thought you weren't going to come back."

There was no response, and after a few moments Kurt lifted his gaze to see a heart-breaking expression on Blaine's face.

"God, Kurt, I'm so sorry. I should have known that being late was such a big thing for you," Blaine gathered both of Kurt's hands in one of his and squeezed. "I was so caught up in buying a coffee maker so that you would forgive me for leaving for eleven years, and then I just went and made it _worse_."

"It's okay." Kurt wasn't completely sure why he said it, because he was still feeling anxious from his small-scale panic attack and was most definitely _not _okay, but he didn't like to see Blaine so cut up about anything.

"No, Kurt, it's not." Blaine ran a hand through his gelled hair, messing it up slightly. "Fuck, Kurt, I feel like such an idiot for leaving you. Again. I mess up everything, don't I?"

Kurt gulped in another deep breath, shaking his head.

"No, you don't, I just… I got nervous because I was in a strange city a thousand years after I was born. But as long as you come back, it's not so bad."

"I'll always come back," Blaine promised. "Even if I'm eleven years late again, I _swear_ I will come back." He reached out to wipe away a single tear, leaving his hand cupping Kurt's cheek. "I hate seeing you cry," he admitted softly, "especially if it's my fault."

It was impossible not to forgive completely when he was acting so sweet and sincere. (Of course, it also made a difference that Kurt was head-over-heels for his knight in shining armour.)

"I'm sure if you buy yourself a watch or learn to read a clock, we'll be able to avoid this happening again," Kurt joked weakly, a small grin twitching at the corners of his lips.

Blaine smiled back at him, tightening his grip around Kurt's waist and pulling him even closer. "Oh no, I'm just going to tie our hands together next time we go out in public so that it's impossible for me to leave you."

"What if I need to pee?"

"I'll go into the bathroom with you."

The easy banter between the two of them was nice, and Kurt didn't even notice the warm, happy feeling creep in, replacing the doubt and hurt from Blaine leaving him. It was only when Blaine almost made him cry with laughter that he realised that he was smiling so hard it almost hurt.

He felt Blaine's arm squeeze slightly, and he looked up questioningly, to find Blaine's face much closer than he expected.

The strength of Blaine's gaze made it impossible for Kurt to look away as he usually would have done. Instead, he found himself so captivated by the hazel eyes that he unconsciously leaned towards them, only noticing his movement when he felt Blaine's breath on his skin.

Their mouths were only separated by an inch of air, though Kurt was sure that there was some kind of vacuum in place because he didn't seem to be able to draw in enough oxygen. He wanted nothing more than to break away and move a safe distance away from Blaine so that he didn't do anything he would regret. Blaine, on the other hand, seemed comfortable with the little space between them.

So comfortable that he leaned forward to close the distance completely.

Kurt's eyes closed as he felt Blaine's lips on his, warm and dry. It was a short, soft kiss; Kurt couldn't help but smile as their lips broke apart, Blaine pressing his forehead against Kurt's, his eyes still closed.

"That was nice," Kurt whispered.

"More than nice," Blaine agreed.

Kurt reached out for Blaine's hand, twining their fingers together as a distraction as he whispered, "I'm glad you came back for me."

Blaine kissed him again, before saying, "I'll always come back for you, Kurt."

* * *

><p><strong>THE END.<strong>

**Although I will most likely be posting some drabbles from this 'verse in another chapter sometime. **

**(This was loosely based of 'The Beast Below' episode, but veeeeery loosely.)**


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